The first ever virtual reality invention was the “Sensorama”. It was invented by Morton Leonard Heilig, an inventor and visionary. He was called the “Father of Virtual Reality”. Sensorama is invented in 1957 and patented in 1962. Its purpose is to enhance the cinematic experience by creating a 3D environment while watching the film. However, it was not commercialized due to the large amount of cost required to produce the film and the machine itself is also costly.

The first head mounted display (HMD) system was invented by Ivan Sutherland, an American computer scientist, in 1968. The experiments started from 1966 and the final product was called “The Sword of Damocles” and was suspended from the ceiling. This system aimed to surround the user with displayed 3D information/graphics and a head tracking system was used to facilitate the experience. It was considered the motivation for the later and similar inventions.

Myron Krueger, also an American computer scientist, developed an artificial reality laboratory called “Videoplace”. The purpose of the lab is to surround the users with an interactive artificial reality without using goggles and gloves. This technology is on display at the State Museum of Natural History, University of Connecticut. Microsoft's Project Natal was probably inspired by this. Videos are available on the website.

The concept of virtual fixtures was introduced by Louis B. Rosenberg. It was one of the first functioning AR systems used in United States Air Force. Similarly, Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre and Doree Seligmann, computer scientists or researchers, created a prototype system called the “KARMA” (Knowledge-based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance) - a system that uses a see-through head-mounted display to facilitate simple maintenance of laser printers by end users.

Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) was introduced at University of North Carolina by Ramesh Raskar, Greg Welch and Henry Fuchs. According to them, in SAR, “the user’s physical environment is augmented with images that are integrated directly in the user’s environment, not simply in their visual field”. Sometimes, SAR is referred to as video mapping. It is a technology that converts objects into a display surface for projections. See the video!

Hirokazu Kato, a professor in Nara Institute of Science and Technology, released the ARToolKit. It is a software for creating AR applications. It allows the overlay of 3D images on the real world. This software helps to commercialize the use of AR and allows people besides computer scientists to use and explore the different possibilities of AR.

Bruce H. Thomas, a professor of Computer Science in University of South Australia, developed ARQuake, the first outdoor AR game. The game was never commercialised and it remained at the prototype stage. However, it generated interest in the public during that time and proved that AR could be used for play too.

Wikitude AR Travel Guide, a mobile AR software developed by an Austrian company, Wikitude GmbH, was launched in 2008. It was published as a free software for all to use and was the first publicly available location-based AR technology. It shows information about the users’ surrounding by using the phone camera as input and GPS/Wifi to capture the location of the user and then display pertinent information about the surroundings.

Pranav Mistry, an Indian computer scientist, invented “SixthSense” which is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world with digital information and uses natural hand gestures to interact with that information. It allows the user to navigate the map, zooming in and out by using hand gestures. It also allows the user to take a picture just by using certain gestures. It strives to enable the obtaining and interacting with information through the use of simple hand gestures.

Laster Technologies, a French company, created the first AR ski goggles with their EnhancedView Technology. It is very much like the concept of the IronMan suit, with software that enables interaction between human and machines, coupled with gestural recognition, digital image correlation and tracking, and voice recognition.